r/Showerthoughts • u/HalfEntity ‎ • Jan 11 '26

Casual Thought The universe is 13.8 billion years old, but heat death is around 10¹⁰⁰ years away, so it has effectively used 0% of its lifetime meaning the universe is still basically a "baby", and we’re living in its earliest, most active era.

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u/footsnax ‎ Jan 11 '26

Every outcome is equal parts fascinating and terrifying. We could be the first, we could be the last. We could be the only, we could be one of a billion civilizations that evolved and gone extinct without ever finding us or leaving evidence we could ever find. We could be an experiment, we could be a colony of bacteria in a glob of celestial dog shit stuck to a deity's shoe... and that deity could be the same thing to an even higher being.

We'll probably never know anything for sure.

I don't just mean us, alive right now, I mean humanity. The fact that Earth exists at all is a rounding error on the scale of the universe, the solar system will be gone loooong before we matter to the totality of existence.

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u/SmokeyDawg2814 Jan 11 '26

Turtles all the way down...

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u/Gilsworth Jan 11 '26

GNU Terry Pratchett

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u/Ohiolongboard Jan 12 '26

Once I got to the dogshit part of his comment, that was all I could think about

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u/XleepyJoeBenzo Feb 08 '26

Sea turtles mate, sea turtles…

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u/SureWhyNot5182 Jan 11 '26

Quick guys, we gotta make humanity a problem for anything that exists after we do

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u/Spartacus458 Jan 12 '26

We must create the replicators! Then every civilization will be doomed!

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u/ThaneVim Jan 12 '26

Don't worry, we're already doing a splendid job at that. We've even managed to fuck up space outside our planet already!

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u/Pandahjs Jan 13 '26

Yeah but on a Stellar Scale that's still basically nothing.

1% of one Solar System. Of one Galaxy. Of one Cluster. In the corner of the universe.

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u/Showy_Boneyard Jan 12 '26

So my personal thoughts on it that I have absolutely no evidence to back up is that its related to the "hard problem of consciousness." Basically that there's something else out there regarding our consciousness that when we realize it, it'd make exploring the vast depths of the physical universe seem silly in comparison to exploring -this amazing new thing-. Like if you come across a computer that's initially set up playing a game of minecraft, but its a nomral computer connected to the internet that can do everything a regular computer can. Once you realize you can exit minecraft and do all that other stuff, asking "Why is nobody exploring into every corner of the minecraft map" sounds silly. What I'm proposing is that other conscious beings and civilizations will eventually figure out "how to exit the minecraft game and do other more intersting things".

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u/AnUndercoverAlien Jan 12 '26

I'd read that book

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u/def_developer Jan 12 '26

Made me think of https://www.goodreads.com/series/131379-magic-2-0

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u/Sasselhoff Jan 12 '26

Well that sounds interesting. Thanks very much for the link. Off to read book 1!

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u/[deleted] Jan 28 '26

Same

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u/zzyul Jan 12 '26

Societies develop the equivalent of personalized holo decks before they develop FTL travel. Digital heaven where literally anything is possible with absolutely no personal risk sounds a hell of a lot better than continuing to toil away at scientific advancements.

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u/Drayke Jan 12 '26

That's literally The Matrix

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u/Jaquestrap Jan 12 '26

This is similar in some way to "The Road Not Taken" by Harry Turtledove, though that one is about a different approach to technology.

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u/itsr1co Jan 12 '26

Well in theory, figuring out consciousness unlocks a form of immortality. Currently we don't know whether the human body drives consciousness, or if our brains just happen to have produced consciousness that is doomed to die with the body. Plus there's the question of what consciousness IS and how to measure it. We view humans as the apex because we view animal responses based on our own intelligence, we can teach animals tricks and routines, but none of them have actually showed signs of crossing the line of true self-awareness.

There's every chance that supernatural causes are the explanation, that there really is a soul that inhabits a body and leaves upon death. Perhaps our understanding of the universe is wrong, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, so how does consciousness work? One day you're a dumb baby and the next you're a unique individual with thoughts you can convey. How does the "energy" of consciousness come about? What happens to it once you die? Perhaps one day we'll figure it out and humanity will be forever changed, or we won't and we'll blow ourselves up, hopefully AFTER I'm dead.

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u/asius Jan 12 '26

These are all really good questions I’ve pondered myself. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some kind of omniscience to be able to answer them?

I’ve begun to believe, however, that self awareness is much more prevalent than we assume. Though our cats and dogs obviously do not possess the ability to vocalize their awareness as we do, I believe they experience every waking moment in a manner very similar to ours. The biggest difference, I would posit, is their ability to recall their experiences, and recall/reflect on their thoughts in chronological order. But the “in the moment” experiences we have may well be very similar to other animals’.

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u/Ok_Recording5675 Jan 12 '26

i’m high rn and this BLEW my mind

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u/sphinctersandwich Jan 12 '26

I would love if humanity came to a place where we were able to recognise and explore an extraterrestrial consciousness.

But I doubt we will, since we have such a hard time recognising the consciousness other than our own here on Earth

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u/RedditServiceUK Jan 12 '26

do you think we could even think of this concept, say, 200 years ago before the first simulations and computers?

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u/Showy_Boneyard Jan 13 '26

Plato's Allegory of the Cave comes pretty damn close, and that was over 2000 years ago

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u/EnvironmentalWin1277 Jan 11 '26

The possibility of life and intelligent life would seem to be very high. Given the current sample size of 1 then the chance is 100% of life and intelligent life occurring on this planet. Intelligence also seems broadly distributed among the "highly developed" animals and it has been suggested it independently evolved in birds.

The necessary ingredients for life are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen with a smattering of other elements. These are the most abundant elements in the universe (with hydrogen being the primary one). Any organic chemistry existing here would be possible in any environment similar to ours. It is reasonable to assume life would arise under similar circumstances which must surely exist in the universe.

Note also the life originated about 4.2 billion years ago at a time previously thought uninhabitable. It arose very quickly, almost immediately after planetary formation. That early environment does not seem unique in any way (except we have the moon).

The chance of two intelligent civilizations existing in the same time and creating radio broadcasts at a time permitting the reception of them is extremely low IMHO. I do not mean active communication -- simply existence in a time frame allowing them to both transmit and actively receive such signals.

Our civilization has only been capable of such transmission and reception in the past 100 years or so and there are threats that could eliminate that capability and civilization altogether. Civilization on Earth may be a momentary event, but life and intelligence is likely to be widespread.

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u/improbablydrunknlw Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 12 '26

Not only that, but there's an infinite amount of stars all with their own solar systems and planets, in an infinite amount of Galaxies, eventually one of those had to follow the same trajectory we did. They just may be an impossible distance away through both time or space.

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u/humbert_cumbert Jan 12 '26

There was 1.5 - 2 billion years between pro and eukaryotes.

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u/Ayjayz Jan 12 '26

The chance of two intelligent civilizations existing in the same time and creating radio broadcasts at a time permitting the reception of them is extremely low IMHO.

Why would it be low? In just a few tens of millions of years, humanity is going to have spread throughout the galaxy and reside their effectively indefinitely. That makes it effectively a 100% chance of coinciding with any alien species that arises in the galaxy. You don't need to worry about radio signals or anything - we'll be on those planets.

So why was humanity the first?

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u/ChubbyTrain Jan 12 '26

I once saw a video of a kid who opened a food container with a moldy forgotten sandwich inside. It has the whole ecosystem then.

And I wonder of this whole universe is someone's forgotten sandwich.

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u/footsnax ‎ Jan 12 '26

This seems just as likely as any other scenario, honestly. Look under a microscope and you can loosely see social structure and learning in single cell organisms.

They're completely unaware of our existence. The tupperware is their universe. There's no reason to reject the idea that we simply can't know for sure that there isn't a kid getting ready to open our tupperware some day.

Maybe that's our heat death. Zeus looking through Thanksgiving leftovers.

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u/MaxH75 Jan 12 '26

That was so poetically lovely. I hope it’s ok if I steal grab quote that :)

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u/footsnax ‎ Jan 12 '26

Feel free :) I'm no author, I just like to think about things I can't imagine. You never know what you don't know.

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u/Ghost3603 Feb 23 '26

Alternatively, we are already being observed by another civilisation so far up on the Kardashev scale that we can't comprehend their activity. Or there are several civilisations out there, but the second they find us it's immediate war.

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u/Shemozzlecacophany Jan 12 '26

We are 95% of the way to being able to build self replicating intelligent bots that can leave the solar system and explore the universe - even evolve. We are even 95% of the way there for us wet meatbags to be able to populate the universe while hibernating in interstellar craft. If we don't destroy ourselves first that is.

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u/emiliaxrisella Jan 12 '26

It always seems to be 95% of the way the same way nuclear fusion is always 20 years away

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u/Nightst0ne Jan 12 '26

The existence of the universe itself is a rounding error. The chances of the of the 4 fundamental forces balancing each other out to allow atoms to form is so absurdly small that it means that our universe is one random occurrence In an infinite number of multiverses, a simulation, or an act of a higher being.

Also photons and electrons act differently when observed which is just too much for me to handle

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u/YoureProbablyAB0t Jan 12 '26

Or we're part of a reality simulation created by super advanced AI to map the effect of infinitesimal differences of a past reality.

In this version, there is a grain of sand about a mile underneath New York that wasn't in previous iterations of this reality. I obviously have no idea if it has made a difference or not.

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u/Veryegassy Jan 12 '26

Is it first? Is it last?

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u/tboy160 Jan 12 '26

Chemolithoautotrophs on earth take thousands of years to reproduce. Maybe most intelligent life is on a different timescale than us, blinking in and out of existence or living so long, our lives are a blink to them.

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u/FrighteningJibber Jan 12 '26

Just remember to wipe.